An award-winning Chinese photographer went missing in early November. His wife, desperate to find him, began telling his story. Slowly, western media picked up the story. Now, the New York Times is reporting Chinese police finally admitted to his arrest.

The photographer, Lu Guang, won three World Press Photo awards for his shocking photographs of desperation, addiction, and pollution, all topics the Communist Party of China didn’t want the world to see.

Lu was visiting Xinjiang, a far-flung part of China best known for its Muslim internment camps, when he went missing, his wife said. This week, Chinese police called Lu’s family to inform them he had been arrested in Kashgar. Kashgar, according to the New York Times, is at the “forefront of a government crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.”

Lu’s wife took to Twitter to announce the news of the arrest. The police refused to give any more information to Lu’s family, other than that he had been arrested.

The translation of the tweet above reads: "Recently, the family received a telephone call from the Kashgar police, confirming that # 卢广 was officially arrested by the Kashgar District Public Security Bureau. The family members have already entrusted lawyers to contact the case handling authorities, and they have not been allowed to meet with Lu Guang, nor have they obtained any formal written procedures. The police have not given more information. Regarding the invitation of Lu Guang, who was also taken away by the National Security Insurance, I have no further information about him. Thank you for your attention!"

The Chinese government is now evading western media. Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, told media he was not aware of the case at a news briefing in Beijing. Reuters, the New York Times, and CNN reached out for comment and did not hear back.

Image Credit: 'Development and Pollution' by Lu Guang, commissioned by Greenpeace International. April 9, 2005. Used With Permission via World Press Photo.Most factories in Hainan Industrial Park of Wuhai City in Inner Mongolia are high-energy consuming and high-pollution producing. China is now the world’s second-largest economy. Its economic development has consumed lots of energy and generated plenty of pollution. A habit of directly discharging unprocessed industrial sewage, exhaust gas and waste material has led to pollution of farmlands, grasslands and drinking water as well as the ocean and the air. Over the past 10 years, factories have been moved from the country’s east to its central and western parts, thus greatly expanding the polluted area and increasing the severity of the the situation. Although the environmental protection administration has shut down many small enterprises with serious pollution emission, some still continue to discharge contaminants illegally.Some have adopted covert operations, such as releasing the smoke and gas waste at night. The sewage channel is embedded into the river and ocean for discharging pollution. Western factories have large evaporation ponds to store sewage, but the sewage sinks into the ground, thus polluting the water source. Minerals, such as coal and iron, are expanded to large-scale predatory strip mine exploitation from the original underground mining. Grassland has been turned into desert. Fertile farmland has given way to barren mountains. Herdsmen no longer have grassland. Farmers have lost their farms, their own homelands destroyed, thus causing the villagers to become displaced. Winds carry the exposed coal dust and sand, causing smog. Smog, in turn, forces middle and primary schools to close. Flights get delayed. The highway gets shut down.The number of hospital patients with respiratory disease goes up. Food and drinking water is polluted, which leads to cancer, so common China has seen the emergence of ‘cancer villages’. China’s environmental pollution has already exerted great threats to the people’s life and security.

Image Credit: 'Development and Pollution' by Lu Guang, commissioned by Greenpeace International. September 14, 2010. Used With Permission via World Press Photo.Wuhai Chemical Plant produces PVC products that create lots of poisonous waste material and sewage, which gets dumped along the coast of the Yellow River. China is now the world’s second-largest economy. Its economic development has consumed lots of energy and generated plenty of pollution. A habit of directly discharging unprocessed industrial sewage, exhaust gas and waste material has led to pollution of farmlands, grasslands and drinking water as well as the ocean and the air. Over the past 10 years, factories have been moved from the country’s east to its central and western parts, thus greatly expanding the polluted area and increasing the severity of the the situation. Although the environmental protection administration has shut down many small enterprises with serious pollution emission, some still continue to discharge contaminants illegally. Some have adopted covert operations, such as releasing the smoke and gas waste at night. The sewage channel is embedded into the river and ocean for discharging pollution. Western factories have large evaporation ponds to store sewage, but the sewage sinks into the ground, thus polluting the water source. Minerals, such as coal and iron, are expanded to large-scale predatory strip mine exploitation from the original underground mining. Grassland has been turned into desert. Fertile farmland has given way to barren mountains. Herdsmen no longer have grassland. Farmers have lost their farms, their own homelands destroyed, thus causing the villagers to become displaced. Winds carry the exposed coal dust and sand, causing smog. Smog, in turn, forces middle and primary schools to close. Flights get delayed. The highway gets shut down. The number of hospital patients with respiratory disease goes up. Food and drinking water is polluted, which leads to cancer, so common China has seen the emergence of ‘cancer villages’. China’s environmental pollution has already exerted great threats to the people’s life and security.

Lu is not the first photojournalist to be arrested in China this year. Reporters Without Borders, a nonprofit focused on advocating the free flow of information, calls Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, a “predator of press freedom.”

Every year, the nonprofit comes out with a World Press Freedom Index. China rang in at 176 out of 180 countries that are ranked. Only Syria, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and North Korea were worse. A new study by the Committee to Protect Journalists found that 47 journalists are currently behind bars in China.

This is the largest number of jailed journalists in any country in the world.

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